London Clubland: A Companion for the Curious, by historian Seth Alexander Thévoz, is the rare book that manages to be both reverent and sly: an impeccably researched directory of London’s private members’ clubs that understands, at a cellular level, which of these places want to be mythologized and which would rather die than be written about at all. The former are treated gently, the latter mercilessly. My favorite section, “What They Probably Don’t Want You to Know,” skewers this distinction perfectly, offering quiet mockery for the clubs desperate to be talked about—Soho House, for instance, which has built an entire business model on insisting it is still misunderstood—while maintaining gentlemanly discretion around those that still prize silence over clout.
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